Tyre market: innovation rate and sales on the rise

The passenger car, light truck and 4x4 SUV tyre market in Italy, looking at specialised tyre dealer channels, closed 2022 at 19.7 million units sold, slightly down on the previous year (-0.4%) and 2.4 billion euros, almost +12% compared to 2021. The average tyre price (including VAT - without fitting service) at the end of 2022 has undoubtedly been affected by inflation and reached €120. From January to May 2023, the market recorded 7 million tyres sold, down from 2022, and almost one billion euros invoiced, up from the same period last year. Average price at 126 euro and still rising. No substantial change in the market shares by vehicle types, while the increase in size with diameters from 18 inches upwards and Four-Season tyres is confirmed. Summer tyres, on the other hand, are suffering, especially in diameters below 18 inches.
In order to understand the rate of innovation in the market, GfK Italy is able to monitor the volumes of passenger car tyres sold according to their year of introduction on the market, considering the Specialised Tyre Retailer channel only. In the first column on the left, we can notice that, out of 100 tyres sold from January to May 2023, 4.5% of these are products launched in 2023, 12.9% are products launched in 2022, 14.8% in 2021, 15.5% in 2020 and so on. In general, these numbers show a passenger car tyre market with a good innovation rate, since almost 50% of sales in the year so far (47.7%) are made up of products launched in the last 4 years (from 2020 onwards). In terms of seasonality, summer tyres have the highest share of items launched and sold on the market in the last year 2023 (5.9%). However, it is Four Season tyres that have the highest innovation rate as almost 60% of the products sold this year were launched after 2020. A further fact confirming the good rate of innovation in the market is provided by this graph with the evolution of the number of Selling Brands. Although the number of selling brands has remained more or less constant in recent years, i.e., no new players have entered the tyre market, the selection of tyres is expanding both in the total market and in the category of tyres with a diameter of more than 18 inches, evidence of the fact that the choice of tyres is constantly expanding.